REVIEW: Awakened by Laura Elliott

Science has stolen sleep and awakened a world of horror.

Civilisation has ended. In a bid to make us more productive, to give us more time, science took sleep from humanity. But sleeplessness turned people into feral monsters and now a small group of scientists are trapped in the Tower of London, consumed by guilt at what they have done and desperately searching for a cure. And then one day, as the last ravens circle, two miraculous survivors walk into the Tower.

Are they the answer or a terrible question?

Review:

"There are really only two types of monster: the one that can hurt us and the one we don't want to be. The Sleepless are both."

Welcome to a surreal speculative horror where sleep has ceased to exist but nightmares are very real.

Awakened is a cerebral, existential crises in book form.

Thea offers a fantastic diarised narration of the whole ordeal, switching between her own memories and observations, reports and research and whatever intrusive thoughts pop into her head while giving us a real sense of the tricking by of time and a building sense of both liminality and urgency. Her desperation to help people like her mother who survived through chronic fatigue and soul crushing tiredness might have been what got her there, but now she needs to save everyone. There was a real conversation littered throughout about our relationships with our bodies, how the chronically ill are so aware of the fragility of the human form, how their tiredness can be soul destroying and that hit very close my heart.

"She isn't made of suffering alone. She's made of what we're all made of: a ghost trapped in a machine, looking for more than we can see. We are not mere stardust decaying across time, we are thought and hope and our own inner dreams, and I think I'm beginning to understand."

This book tries to bridge fiction with reality, making this world of horror seem possible with the little details - whether it’s including the highly controversial HeLa cells as part of their research, — with subtle kind of horror that isn’t zombies clawing down the door, but despair, death, fear and the unknown.

It read more like a dystopian, literary tale but definitely would appeal to the horror lovers too. If you loved Bird Box, I Am Legend, or The Girl with All the Gifts you will loooooove this.

⭐⭐⭐

Awakened is available from 10th June with Angry Robot. I received a reviewers copy of this title.

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